Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine - Master Crafted Edition

Space Marine MCE is a $40 high resolution texture pack of the first Space Marine game. Want my advice? Go buy the Anniversary Edition instead. https://store.steampowered.com/app/55150/Warhammer_40000_Space_Marine__Anniversary_Edition/ Yes, both cost the same but AE actually has a small but dedicated playerbase and it doesn't take up 43 gigs of space on your computer. I hate to be dismissive of MCE because the high res textures and remastered sounds are good but that's all I can compliment the game. This "remaster" has practically ZERO quality of life additions or features that fans have been wanting. There's no FOV slider, no borderless fullscreen, the controls still feel the same despite the "remastered control scheme", some challenges still take forever to complete and some can only be done in PvP. They had the mind to add a streamer mode at least which hides your lobby code but they couldn't care to add something so basic like a FOV slider... Dude. What are we doing? There is crossplay at least which is cool but MCE is officially dead, SteamDB says that the average player count is around 13-17 and even despite turning crossplay on in the settings I cannot find games with anybody so that tells me that nobody's playing on console either. Let's talk about the graphics, like I said I think the graphics and the sounds are good but the "interface overhaul" if you can call it that just looks worse and isn't faithful at all to the original. They even extended this overhaul to the menus and to me it just makes navigating the menus worse and I actually hate it. [b]Go buy Space Marine - Anniversary Edition instead.[/b]

TL;DR: Get it if it's under $10, turn on V-Sync to prevent crashes; have some fun. I picked this up on a big sale after putting over 200 hours into Space Marine 2. I wanted to see the origin story of Captain Titus from this game. I knew it was old, and I saw a ton of complaints in the reviews, so I was a bit wary going in. I was expecting dated gameplay that I'd just have to suffer through to enjoy the story. So I was a bit surprised to actually be enjoying the gameplay after about 15 minutes or so. It's a LOT different than Space Marine 2, and while Space Marine 2 is, imo, a vast improvement in gameplay, SM 1 was still good and fun. I did have one crash, but after that I enabled V-SYNC to control framerate and didn't have any more (apparently, the crashes are caused when framerate is too high at certain scenes, so V-Sync should take care of that (and it did for me)). Story was good, gameplay was good. I didn't try online (I've heard it's dead anyway). I wouldn't play this game again (not with SM 2 out there), but if you can get it on a big discount (I'd say $10 or less) it's a fun little 9 hour campaign (I played on hard). You'll see the story, you'll have some fun, and you'll learn why Leandros is a bum. Good times.

This "remake" takes a great game and makes it worse in exchange for a minor graphics upgrade. It is a pathetic attempt that the development company should be ashamed of.

I only bought this because the Anniversary Edition gave me a black screen right after the opening cutscene. None of the fixes suggested online worked. So I spent the extra $40 to buy the "master crafted" edition just so it would run. I finished the game in 7 hours. I see others mainly complaining about the price, and I agree. They ran a limited time deal where people who owned the Anniversary Edition (also $40) could get this game with a discount, but in my opinion it should not have been a limited time deal. It should have remained heavily discounted for people who already owned the Anniversary Edition. This is only a remaster, not a remake, and for having come out in 2025 it doesn't look like it. The graphics got only a minor improvement compared to the Anniversary Edition, the game still doesn't look like a 2025 game. The price tag for a slight graphics upgrade is atrocious. They could have made a proper remake. Update the graphics, update the mechanics to be more modern. The most annoying part of the gameplay mechanic is having to execute an enemy to gain health back. The execution animation cannot be interrupted, and you CONTINUE TO TAKE DAMAGE while this long animation plays out, and you don't get health until the animation is done.

Controller does not work. Tried all the fixes on youtube, google, chatgbt and steam community discussions. This is a known issue and we cannot play. The game works on keyboard and mouse but the icons are from controller and it's so annoying. Unplayable.

Would be fun if it worked properly, dont buy! If you use an analog keyboard but want to play on a controller or kb/m, good luck. Eventually I got it working by simply unplugging everything but my controller. Then in the first level, when doing certain actions, the screen will simply turn black except for the UI Ofc that makes the game unplayable. Its broken and abandoned by its devs.

[b]Rating: [/b] ★★★ - Okay [b]Time Played:[/b] 8 hours [b]Difficulty:[/b] Normal [b]Gameplay:[/b] - The melee-ranged hybrid loop is genuinely satisfying in the first few hours. Chainsawing through Orks while toggling to a bolter mid-combo feels exactly as brutal as it should in 40K. - The Fury system is the only real ability, and while it improves slightly never truly feels evolved. - Combat variety exhausts itself well before the mission list does. Same Ork mob types, same counters, same environmental layouts recycled across industrial corridors that all start to look identical. - Jump pack sections are scripted setpieces, not a persistent tool. While they're fun, they don't last long. [b]Story\Dialogue:[/b] - Titus is a competent protagonist. Stoic. Loyal. Unsubtle. Very 40K, and he carries the campaign on personality alone. - The mid-game pivot from Orks to Chaos adds genuine stakes. - Leandros's ideological friction with Titus is the only character thread with real tension; everyone else exists to deliver exposition. - Dialogue is serviceable 40K bombast. Declarations, not nuance. - The ending is a deliberate cliff-hanger that went unresolved for 13 years. It lands differently now that Space Marine 2 exists, but it definitely felt like half a story. [b]Graphics\Music:[/b] - The remaster is improved but not transformed. In isolation it reads as a polished 2011 game, not a 2025 one, which is an honest limitation to set expectations around. - Environments are the weak point: sprawling, flat, monocolour, and poorly detailed. Lighting also makes everything look blended and low-contrast, which undercuts the scale the art direction is aiming for. - Character models and armour detail are noticeably better and hold up well in close-range execution cutscenes where the camera lingers but still could be improved. - Audio is the clear standout. Bolter fire, chainsword revs, and execution crunches are weighty and visceral, genuinely improving the feel of combat. - The score is full-throated 40K orchestral bombast and fits perfectly. It's one of the few elements of the original that needed no improvement. [b]Before you Play:[/b] - Don't buy this expecting Space Marine 2 with older graphics. It's a shallower, more repetitive experience and should be treated as a piece of 40K history rather than a comparable modern game. Better compared to Gears of War 1. - While the enemies change at the half-way point, the game never feels like it shifts or changes which can turn into a burnout problem. What you have at hour one is what you have at hour eight. - Health does not regenerate. Executions are your sustain, so stay aggressive with a push and pull of melee and ranged fire. - Save Fury for named/elite enemies rather than mobs. It trivialises mini-boss encounters and is wasted on adds. - If the combat hasn't deepened for you by chapter 4, it won't. The game shows you its full toolkit early and adds nothing mechanically; manage your expectations accordingly or set a natural stopping point.

It's Space Marine 1 made to run on modern computers. With some higher resolution textures. That's it. As usual, Steam reviews are full of complaints about performance and stability. Also as usual, I didn't have any issues. Game runs great, zero crashes, zero meaningful bugs. Looks and sounds better than the original. I honestly have no idea what people must be doing to their computers to be having all these problems. The game itself is a mediocre 360-era corridor shooter wrapped in 40K aesthetics. It's hardly lore accurate in any meaningful sense. Orks in 40K have never been as weak as they are in this game. But it works as a theme park ride through things you recognize from the setting. That doesn't sound like high praise, and it really isn't that special of a game. Never was, not even when it was new. But the game also knows not to overstay its welcome. For the few hours it takes to complete the campaign, the atmosphere and spectacle are enough to carry the experience. And it is neat how the missions flow from one to the next pretty seamlessly. If you just want a good third-person shooter and don't care about 40K, there are a hundred better ones on Steam. I played the game on Hard and it was not hard. I recommend bumping up the difficulty to preserve some tension.

The game keeps crashing at the beginning of Chapter 3. I cannot progress the story.